


The Thin Line Separating Laughter and Pain

by rosewiththorns



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Cutting, Detroit Red Wings, First Kiss, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Kissing, M/M, Secret love, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-06
Updated: 2015-11-06
Packaged: 2018-04-30 08:50:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5157614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosewiththorns/pseuds/rosewiththorns
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Only Nik can take away Hank's pain. Please be aware that this story contains references to self-harm and cutting, so make an informed decision about reading it. Written per reader request.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Thin Line Separating Laughter and Pain

**Author's Note:**

> As mentioned in the summary, trigger warnings for self-harm and cutting. Please don't read if these topics will cause you extreme distress or if they simply aren't your cup of tea.

“There is a thin line that separates laughter and pain, comedy and tragedy, humor and hurt.”—Erma Bomebeck

The Thin Line Separating Laughter and Pain

All day at practice, Hank had been as brooding as a thundercloud, and Nik had noticed, because he always took note of how Hank was feeling, observing and naming each of Hank’s myriad moods: jovial and morose; triumphant and despondent; agitated and placid; somber and playful. Part of what drew Nik’s attention to Hank was the emotional peaks and valleys he seemed to possess, which were so different from the mostly flat and unvaried terrain of Nik’s steady demeanor. If Nik was a boring temperate zone, Hank was the frigid poles and the blazing tropics.

Deciding that Hank could do with a pick-me-up, Nik spun through a local McDonald’s drive-through, because he knew just what to order there—a large serving of fries and chocolate shake—to turn Hank’s mood around. He had memorized many of Hank’s eating preferences since catching covert glances of Hank chewing gave him an excuse to look at Hank’s mouth in a way that wasn’t creepy, or at least he hoped wasn’t creepy. Nik wasn’t a stalker; he just had daydreams (and even more dreams at night when he couldn’t consciously control them) about Hank’s lips brushing across his. 

With a cardboard tray bearing two large servings of fries (one for Hank and one for himself) as well as Hank’s chocolate shake and his own vanilla one (because he wasn’t even exciting enough to purchase something potentially seedy like strawberry), Nik, humming tunelessly to himself because he had inherited his mother’s borderline tone-deafness, cruised over to Hank’s house. After parking, he slipped his cell out of the pocket of his jeans and texted Hank: Got fries and shakes from McD’s. Open up. 

As Nik exited the car, balancing the tray of food and drinks in one hand, while the other shut the door and locked the vehicle with a click of the button on his key, Hank opened his front door. Hank didn’t say anything as Nik walked along the stone pathway and up the front steps, but when Nik passed him to enter the house, Hank stretched out a hand to snag a fry, dipped it in a pool of barbecue sauce, and tossed it into his mouth, commenting as he chewed, “Thanks for stopping by with this, Kronner.” 

Nik had barely set the tray down on the nearest coffee table in the living room when Hank’s hand again snaked out to grab another fry. Since it was impossible not to stare at Hank’s hand when it was so close to him, Nik immediately saw when Hank’s sleeve slid up, revealing a ring of red scabs just above his wrist. 

“What’s this?” Nik frowned, as he brushed his fingers over the scabs, causing Hank to flinch even though his touch had been soft as a whisper. 

“Nothing.” Hank yanked his arm away from Nik. 

“Would you say it was nothing if I had marks like that on my arm, Z?” demanded Nik, his concern rising at Hank’s evasion. 

“It doesn’t matter.” Hank’s lips pressed into a thin line. 

“Of course it matters.” Nik refused to be put-off even if Hank was about as welcoming as a haunted house. “You matter. Tell me what happened.” 

“I—“ Hank took a breath that rattled like arthritic bones—“made a mistake. That’s all, Kronner.” 

“A mistake?” echoed Nik, his knees transforming to Play-Doh so abruptly that he collapsed onto the leather couch that was fortunately behind him. 

“It’s always a mistake when I do it.” Falling onto the sofa beside Nik, Hank clutched his head tightly as if his palms were all that were keeping it attached to his neck. “Sorry you have to know how much of a fuck-up I am.” 

“You aren’t a fuck-up.” Fervent as any lover, Nik shook his head. He considered asking how often Hank hurt himself, but then realized it was a pointless question. Hank cutting himself even once was too much. Nik had to figure out how to stop it, not get sidetracked by how many times Hank might have done it. “Can you explain to me why you do it, Z? I don’t want to judge, I promise. I just need to be able to understand so I can help you.” 

“It’s the pressure.” Hank pinched the bridge of his nose as if he were suffering from the sudden onset of a migraine. “Sometimes it hurts so bad that I want nothing more than to isolate the pain to one damn place so that the rest of me can be numb.” 

Hank emitted a brittle laugh, and Nik, who had never found anything less funny in his life, winced, as Hank went on brokenly, “Now you probably think I’m an attention whore who does crazy shit just to get noticed.” 

“Why the hell would I think that?” stuttered Nik, convinced that nobody carved themselves up just to earn some attention and that, even if they did, they were still obviously in need of help if they resorted to such dire measures. 

“I don’t know.” Hank offered a shrug utterly devoid of answers. “That’s just what everybody thought back home if they found out about it.” 

“I love you, Hank.” Clueless about what to say and do, Nik gave the only answer he could invent under circumstances that had paralyzed his brain and wrapped an arm around Hank’s quaking shoulders.

Hank’s eyes were so watery and bleak, as if all his hope were drowning in their dark depths, that they became a whirlpool that drew Nik’s lips forward until they met Hank’s. His lips tingled as every nerve near his mouth went into sensory overload, trying to drink in the texture and taste of Hank’s lips before Hank shoved Nik’s mouth away, but Hank wasn’t pushing Nik off him or making any attempt to extract himself from Nik. 

As Hank’s mouth began to move under his, returning the kiss with an ardor more amazing than Nik had imagined even in his wildest midnight dreams, Nik’s arm drifted down Hank’s back to encircle his waist. 

“I love you, too, and I don’t hurt anymore.” Hank’s murmur tickled Nik’s lips and sent a shiver sailing along Nik’s spine. 

“I thought, if anything, you would’ve loved Pav.” All the jealousy that Nik had concealed from others and denied from himself came streaming out of him now. Pav and Hank were as inseparable as two peas in a pod, and Nik, who kept careful track of who touched Hank when, had calculated that Hank hugged Pav twice as often as he did anyone else on the team. Watching Pav and Hank, it had been all too easy to picture that Pav’s silky smooth mitts practiced an entirely different sort of stick handling when he was alone with Hank, and Pav wasn’t called the Magic Man for nothing. 

“Pav and I are twins by different mothers.” Hank took advantage of the fact that Nik’s mouth was open to flick his tongue inside it, sliding it along Nik’s and distracting it enough that it forgot it was going to protest that twins couldn’t come from different mothers, which was just as well, since everything about Hank was too incredible to be believed. Why shouldn’t he have a twin from a different mother to go along with everything else that was so impossible about him? “You don’t have a desire to do this with your twin unless you have incest issues that I, thank God, don’t, because I couldn’t deal with incest issues on top of all my other problems, I assure you.” 

“When you have your problems—“ Nik forced himself to pull away from Hank, so that Hank would realize he was serious as a heart attack—“call me, or text me, or send up some damn smoke signs, but let me know, so that I can come over to kiss away your pain. That’s much better than you trying to cut it out of you, because you’re no surgeon, and you just end up hurting yourself worse.” 

“All right.” Hank’s lips were pointed into a pout that accentuated—Nik was sure deliberately and manipulatively—their tempting curves. “I’ll be a good boy. Can I have a kiss as a reward now?” 

“Yeah, you can have that.” Caving like rocks during a mine explosion, Nik pressed his mouth against Hank’s in a firm kiss. As the exhilaration of being able to do this not just once but a million times over in the future flooded him, he added, determined to show that he could play the role of seducer as well, “And much more as long as you remember to ask nicely.”


End file.
